1. Introductory Remarks 2. The Syntactic Nature of Switch-Reference 3. Inclusive Reference and Sw... more 1. Introductory Remarks 2. The Syntactic Nature of Switch-Reference 3. Inclusive Reference and Switch-Reference 4. Anticipatory Subjects 5. Related and Residual Topics
This paper reports on studies of second language acquisition in two domains, phonology and syntax... more This paper reports on studies of second language acquisition in two domains, phonology and syntax. The phenomena investigated were the acquisition by native speakers of Hindi, Japanese, and Korean of two areas of English: in phonology, the mastery of particular syllable onset clusters, and in syntax, the acquisition of the binding patterns of reflexive anaphors. Both these areas are ones for which multi-valued parameters have been posited to account for the range of variation across natural languages. The paper presents evidence that acquisition in these two areas is quite similar: at a certain stage of acquisition learners seem to arrive at a parameter setting that is midway between the native and the target language settings. This effect occurs both when the target language employs a less marked setting than the native language and when the target language setting is more marked than that of the native language. I Introduction This paper deals with two basic questions in second la...
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 1998
DPs in several Austronesian languages from southwestern Sulawesi show the D head as an enclitic o... more DPs in several Austronesian languages from southwestern Sulawesi show the D head as an enclitic on an element within the DP. Where N is unmodified, D cliticizes to N, and where D is modified, D cliticizes to the modifier. A structure in which NP and the modifying phrase are treated as arguments of D is proposed, and the cliticization pattern is analyzed as resulting from head movement. Depending on the valency of the DP, NP will either be specifier or complement of D. This analysis extends easily to account for some otherwise puzzling patterns shown in relative clauses where D cliticizes to the right periphery of the verb of the modifying CP. Under the minimalist hypotheses that overt movement is a function of feature strength and that the strength of the relevant features can vary from language to language, certain patterns of head-adjunction involving V, I, C, and D are expected and the predictions are discussed.
The present study was designed to extend the investigation of genetic factors for schizophrenia t... more The present study was designed to extend the investigation of genetic factors for schizophrenia to cognitive and linguistic signs of central nervous system dysfunction. Of 5 1 siblings studied from 19 schizophrenia multiplex families, 37 had a DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia or related schizophrenia spectrum disorder and 14 were well. Controls were 17 unrelated healthy individuals within the same social class and age range. Subjects were tested on measures of memory, attention. reading and expressive language ability. Schizophrenic and spectrum disorder siblings were significantly more impaired in tests of auditory discrimination and memory than their well siblings or controls and displayed significantly reduced syntactic complexity to their speech. While well siblings did not differ from controls on most measures. some aspects of language complexity were reduced. A familial effect was observed for tests of reading ability, attention. some syntactic measures. and short-term memory. although these were not the measures that distinguished patients from controls in this cohort; the scores were not correlated among the ill sibling pairs, and poorer scores did not segregate with schizophrenia within these families. Thus. while some measures of language, memory and attention are deviant in patients with schizophrenia. they may not be heritable and directly related to the genetics of the disorder. Instead. they may be a manifestation of. rather than a vulnerability to. the illness. 6 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.
Reversal or reduction of normal structural cerebral asymmetries may be related to the pathogenesi... more Reversal or reduction of normal structural cerebral asymmetries may be related to the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, but this relationship remains controversial. We review the literature and describe a further study designed to detect whether anomalous asymmetries are present early in the illness (at the first episode), whether they predict deficits in language processing, and whether they may be related to a genetic predisposition for schizophrenia. Asymmetries of brain widths and segments of the sylvian fissure were assessed in a magnetic resonance imaging study of 87 patients with a first episode of schizophrenia and 52 normal controls. These asymmetries were correlated with specific measures of language processing, memory, and hand skill. An independent group of 14 pairs of siblings with schizophrenia were also evaluated for evidence of heritability to cerebral asymmetries. Width asymmetries were reduced in patients compared with controls in the posterior (p = 0.02) and occipital (p = 0.05) regions. Brain horizontal length, on the other hand, was significantly more asymmetrical in patients (left > right; p = 0.04). For sylvian fissure measurements, asymmetries in controls (left > right) were greatest for the horizontal component; this asymmetry tended to detect differences in patients by comparison with controls (p < 0.06). In a range of tests of language and memory, few significant correlations between performance and cerebral asymmetries were detected either in patients or controls, although patients consistently scored poorer than controls in the majority of tests. In 14 pairs of psychotic siblings, within-pair correlations for the horizontal sylvian fissure asymmetry were significantly greater than between-pair correlations. These findings are consistent with the early presence (possibly genetic) of anomalous cere-bral asymmetry. However, the functional correlates of reduced asymmetry remain obscure.
The word order of Turkana (Kenya, Nilo-Saharan) is strongly verb-subject-object (VSO) (Dimmendaal... more The word order of Turkana (Kenya, Nilo-Saharan) is strongly verb-subject-object (VSO) (Dimmendaal 1983a,b), although there are systematic VOS deviations that correlate with what Dimmendaal (1983a, 1985) terms "prominence;" where the object outranks the subject along a certain scale, it takes linear precedence. In what follows, I will provide an analysis of Turkana V-initial word order in terms of V raising, and I will attempt to capture Dimmendaal's insights in terms of a set of constraints that interact to yield the observed word order (the verbal arguments will also be ordered in terms of hierarchical prominence). The properties that the prominence constraints are sensitive to are morphosyntactic -pronominal, definite, etc. -though these notions do have discourse correlates. I will argue that a low topic position in the functional architecture of the clause is implicated in the analysis, and I will motivate this position via arguments from adverb placement and ellipsis.
Clitics and crisp edges in Makassarese* Hasan Basri, Ellen Broselow, & Daniel Finer State Univers... more Clitics and crisp edges in Makassarese* Hasan Basri, Ellen Broselow, & Daniel Finer State University of New York at Stony Brook Makassarese, a language of South Sulawesi, has three types of suffixes, distinguished by their syntactic and phonological behavior. We present an ...
1. Introductory Remarks 2. The Syntactic Nature of Switch-Reference 3. Inclusive Reference and Sw... more 1. Introductory Remarks 2. The Syntactic Nature of Switch-Reference 3. Inclusive Reference and Switch-Reference 4. Anticipatory Subjects 5. Related and Residual Topics
This paper reports on studies of second language acquisition in two domains, phonology and syntax... more This paper reports on studies of second language acquisition in two domains, phonology and syntax. The phenomena investigated were the acquisition by native speakers of Hindi, Japanese, and Korean of two areas of English: in phonology, the mastery of particular syllable onset clusters, and in syntax, the acquisition of the binding patterns of reflexive anaphors. Both these areas are ones for which multi-valued parameters have been posited to account for the range of variation across natural languages. The paper presents evidence that acquisition in these two areas is quite similar: at a certain stage of acquisition learners seem to arrive at a parameter setting that is midway between the native and the target language settings. This effect occurs both when the target language employs a less marked setting than the native language and when the target language setting is more marked than that of the native language. I Introduction This paper deals with two basic questions in second la...
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 1998
DPs in several Austronesian languages from southwestern Sulawesi show the D head as an enclitic o... more DPs in several Austronesian languages from southwestern Sulawesi show the D head as an enclitic on an element within the DP. Where N is unmodified, D cliticizes to N, and where D is modified, D cliticizes to the modifier. A structure in which NP and the modifying phrase are treated as arguments of D is proposed, and the cliticization pattern is analyzed as resulting from head movement. Depending on the valency of the DP, NP will either be specifier or complement of D. This analysis extends easily to account for some otherwise puzzling patterns shown in relative clauses where D cliticizes to the right periphery of the verb of the modifying CP. Under the minimalist hypotheses that overt movement is a function of feature strength and that the strength of the relevant features can vary from language to language, certain patterns of head-adjunction involving V, I, C, and D are expected and the predictions are discussed.
The present study was designed to extend the investigation of genetic factors for schizophrenia t... more The present study was designed to extend the investigation of genetic factors for schizophrenia to cognitive and linguistic signs of central nervous system dysfunction. Of 5 1 siblings studied from 19 schizophrenia multiplex families, 37 had a DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia or related schizophrenia spectrum disorder and 14 were well. Controls were 17 unrelated healthy individuals within the same social class and age range. Subjects were tested on measures of memory, attention. reading and expressive language ability. Schizophrenic and spectrum disorder siblings were significantly more impaired in tests of auditory discrimination and memory than their well siblings or controls and displayed significantly reduced syntactic complexity to their speech. While well siblings did not differ from controls on most measures. some aspects of language complexity were reduced. A familial effect was observed for tests of reading ability, attention. some syntactic measures. and short-term memory. although these were not the measures that distinguished patients from controls in this cohort; the scores were not correlated among the ill sibling pairs, and poorer scores did not segregate with schizophrenia within these families. Thus. while some measures of language, memory and attention are deviant in patients with schizophrenia. they may not be heritable and directly related to the genetics of the disorder. Instead. they may be a manifestation of. rather than a vulnerability to. the illness. 6 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.
Reversal or reduction of normal structural cerebral asymmetries may be related to the pathogenesi... more Reversal or reduction of normal structural cerebral asymmetries may be related to the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, but this relationship remains controversial. We review the literature and describe a further study designed to detect whether anomalous asymmetries are present early in the illness (at the first episode), whether they predict deficits in language processing, and whether they may be related to a genetic predisposition for schizophrenia. Asymmetries of brain widths and segments of the sylvian fissure were assessed in a magnetic resonance imaging study of 87 patients with a first episode of schizophrenia and 52 normal controls. These asymmetries were correlated with specific measures of language processing, memory, and hand skill. An independent group of 14 pairs of siblings with schizophrenia were also evaluated for evidence of heritability to cerebral asymmetries. Width asymmetries were reduced in patients compared with controls in the posterior (p = 0.02) and occipital (p = 0.05) regions. Brain horizontal length, on the other hand, was significantly more asymmetrical in patients (left > right; p = 0.04). For sylvian fissure measurements, asymmetries in controls (left > right) were greatest for the horizontal component; this asymmetry tended to detect differences in patients by comparison with controls (p < 0.06). In a range of tests of language and memory, few significant correlations between performance and cerebral asymmetries were detected either in patients or controls, although patients consistently scored poorer than controls in the majority of tests. In 14 pairs of psychotic siblings, within-pair correlations for the horizontal sylvian fissure asymmetry were significantly greater than between-pair correlations. These findings are consistent with the early presence (possibly genetic) of anomalous cere-bral asymmetry. However, the functional correlates of reduced asymmetry remain obscure.
The word order of Turkana (Kenya, Nilo-Saharan) is strongly verb-subject-object (VSO) (Dimmendaal... more The word order of Turkana (Kenya, Nilo-Saharan) is strongly verb-subject-object (VSO) (Dimmendaal 1983a,b), although there are systematic VOS deviations that correlate with what Dimmendaal (1983a, 1985) terms "prominence;" where the object outranks the subject along a certain scale, it takes linear precedence. In what follows, I will provide an analysis of Turkana V-initial word order in terms of V raising, and I will attempt to capture Dimmendaal's insights in terms of a set of constraints that interact to yield the observed word order (the verbal arguments will also be ordered in terms of hierarchical prominence). The properties that the prominence constraints are sensitive to are morphosyntactic -pronominal, definite, etc. -though these notions do have discourse correlates. I will argue that a low topic position in the functional architecture of the clause is implicated in the analysis, and I will motivate this position via arguments from adverb placement and ellipsis.
Clitics and crisp edges in Makassarese* Hasan Basri, Ellen Broselow, & Daniel Finer State Univers... more Clitics and crisp edges in Makassarese* Hasan Basri, Ellen Broselow, & Daniel Finer State University of New York at Stony Brook Makassarese, a language of South Sulawesi, has three types of suffixes, distinguished by their syntactic and phonological behavior. We present an ...
Uploads
Papers by Daniel Finer